Trapped on Venus (5 page)

 
Marty glanced down at
his watch.

 
“We’d better head back
to the ship now, Scott. We’ve got a little less than forty-five minutes of oxygen
left, and it’ll take us a good fifteen to get back. Besides, maybe I can fix
the receiver and get Stimson’s men working on it.”

 
“Roger, Marty,” Scott
agreed.

 
The men turned, checked
their compasses, and hobbled back across the Venusian soil toward their craft.
Scott stopped from time to time to take photographs, but the surface was so
flat and unchanging that many were repetitious. Still, it was their goal to
bring back to Earth as much information as they could and it was easy enough to
overlook something important when you didn’t have time to study it. So, Scott
included as many different angles and views as he could, knowing that more
could always be learned in a laboratory than could ever be learned on a field
expedition.

 
But, as they crossed
the Venusian terrain, getting closer to the ship, the ground trembled and split
in front of them.

 
“Hold it, Marty!”
Scott yelled. “It’s breaking up again!”

 
But, Marty had already
stopped. He froze in his tracks, watching the strange phenomenon for the first
time. Lines zigzagged across the soil, sectioning the area into symmetrical
quadrants, then widened and split.
What could have caused it this time? It
wasn’t their body weight because they were still twenty feet away from the
cracks. No holes, no pressure.... And, this was the second time it had
happened. What if it spread to the ship?

 
Marty advanced a few
feet more, prepared to go around the area if it appeared safe to the sides, when
suddenly it split enormously wide. The crust sagged and collapsed, leaving a
hole fifteen or twenty feet across with the thick, oily liquid bubbling up near
the surface. It buffeted from side to side, much the way water does when a pan
is rocked slowly back and forth, then seemed to congeal, to harden along the
walls of the pool.

 
“Look at that!” Scott
admonished, amazed by the spectacle. “It’s a pool of some kind!”

 
Marty remained silent,
observing the strange phenomenon wide-eyed in an attempt to learn as much about
it as he could. He watched as the surface rose like a giant bubble, split into
five sections, then watched as the pieces sank into the dark liquid.

 
“Those pieces didn’t
break away like that before,” Scott added. “It’s happening differently this
time. I don’t understand it.”

 
“Are you getting
pictures?” Marty asked. It was an effort to conceal his anxiety.

 
“Affirmative. I’m
shooting as fast as I can. But, I can’t get a good fix on where it’s going to
happen next, Marty. It’s happening too fast.”

 
“Just keep shooting. I
want to see this when I have more time to study it. It... it’s almost as if
it... it’s... thawing, breaking up the way ice does.”

 
Marty paused for a
long moment, staring unwaveringly at the surface of the rising liquid. But, as
he watched, he could hardly believe his eyes.

 
“Scott? Are you
watching this? Are you... Look. Right in the center of the pool. Do you see
anything? Do you see anything strange? Does it look like it... it’s getting
darker to you? Thicker? Right in the center. Do you see it? Do you... It’s
almost like it...”

 
There was no need for
him to finish his sentence. Both watched as a dark, bulbous lump formed in the
middle of the pool. It seemed to have no definite shape or outline, appearing
only as a rising, undulating glob of gelatin, changing its color and
configuration like the slow ripple of a wave. Its contours rolled forward and
backward in perpetual motion, and its surface color changed from dark to darker
to dark again with each movement. It was composed of the same oily,
gelatin-like material as the pool, yet it was more cohesive, more fluid, more
mobile, seeming almost as if it could breathe....

 
Marty and Scott were
entranced by its slow undulation.
Was it alive, they wondered? Did it know they
were present? Where did it come from? How was it formed? Were there others? How
did it move? What caused it to change colors?
There were so many questions,
so many things to learn, a multitude of unexplained possibilities – yet, there
was so little time left.

 
“Scott, we’ve only got
twenty-five minutes of oxygen left. Let’s move along the outer edge so we don’t
get cut off,” Marty suggested.

 
The ship was a mere
twenty-five or thirty yards ahead and the need to return pressed upon them even
greater, but the pool loomed directly in their path.

 
“Just give me a few
more seconds,” Scott said, continuing to photograph the strange phenomenon.
“I’ve got to get a couple more.”

 
“We haven’t got time,
Scott. You’ve got enough already. Come on, we’ve got to get back to the ship.”

 
But, Scott continued
to film the strange bubbling shape, waiting for its steady roll to break at the
right angle for the best photograph. He clicked off three, four, five more
frames. Marty was impatient.

 
“Scott! We haven’t
got...”

 
“There,” he said with
finality. “That’s it, Marty. The digital magazine is full.”

 
“Then, let’s head
back.”

 
Scott swung the camera
out of the way, clamping the hinged extension arm against his life support unit
to keep it from interfering with his movements. Then the men shuffled off to
the right of the pool, watching as the substance continued to undulate in its
murky rhythm. Scott stopped.

 
“Hold it, Marty!” he
yelled abruptly. “Look! It’s splitting again!”

 
The ground to the
right of the first pool cracked, split, and divided into segments exactly as
the first had done, then the sections fell away revealing another pool of
shimmering liquid. Slowly, the center darkened until another glob formed on the
surface. The astronauts shuffled back from it.

 
“Look at that,” Marty
breathed, a tinge of anxiety creeping into his voice. “Another one.”

 
Ominously, the two
creatures – whatever they were – throbbed rhythmically between the astronauts
and their ship, blocking any attempt to advance.

 
“Do you think they’re
alive?” Scott asked. “Look at how they seem to follow us when we move. It’s as
if they know we’re here!”

 
“They... they can’t
be,” was Marty’s answer. Still, as he watched the two shapeless globs, he
couldn’t help but feel uneasy. He felt as if they were leering at him, staring,
carefully appraising his movements to determine what, or who, he was. Yet, even
his uneasiness was a mixture of fear and fascination.
If they were alive –
could it really be,
he thought? –
would they attack?
Neither Scott
nor Marty had weapons. They would be helpless, defenseless. Yet, the creatures
seemed so harmless, so quiet, so... curious.
Were they trying to
communicate? Could they communicate? If only....

 
Scott interrupted his
thoughts.

 
“Marty, let’s try this
way.” He nudged Marty’s shoulder, pointing to the left of the pools. “I’ve only
got twenty minutes of air left. We’ve got to get back to the ship.”

 
Marty understood and
followed as Scott started off to the left. He was reluctant to leave but knew
that each minute they delayed their oxygen supply would be that much less. He
looked down at his own indicator, noting twenty-one minutes left. Apparently he
wasn’t using as much oxygen as Scott was.

 
They moved cautiously
to the left, trying not to attract undue attention, but with little change in
the creatures in front of them. The creatures continued to undulate and change
colors with the same regularity as before. It was almost as if the creatures
could sense them!
No, it couldn’t be,
Marty thought.

 
Scott stopped. Marty
looked ahead to see why, and watched as the ground severed then collapsed in
their path. They were blocked off again. Seams radiated out from a spot fifteen
feet in front of them, cracked, separated, then dropped away. They were
trapped.

 
Scott stared at the
hole in bewilderment. The liquid rose until it was level with the planet’s
surface, then bubbled and darkened as a third creature emerged.

 
“There’s another one,
Scott!” Marty yelled.

 
Marty’s voice was
strained. There was a hint of panic, of frustration in it; a futility which
quickened his heartbeat.

 
“They’re blocking us
off, Scott! They’re not going to let us get to the ship!”

 
It was moments like
these when Scott had to rely on all his self-control to keep calm. They were in
trouble, severe trouble, and only a calm, scientific mind could accurately
appraise the situation. But, a tremor of fear, of helplessness, shuddered
through his limbs. Pull yourself together, he thought. Keep control. Analyze,
evaluate... THINK!

 
He turned to Marty, a slight
trace of fear still remaining in his voice.

 
“We’re scientists,
Marty. There’s got to be an answer to this, something we can do. Just stay
calm, don’t give up.” He glanced down at his watch. Seventeen minutes left.

 
A thought occurred to
him. “What if they are alive, Marty? What if they know exactly what they’re
doing? That would mean that they must have an intelligence of some kind, some
way of thinking. If they do, maybe we can communicate with them, make them
understand what they’re doing to us.”

 
“How?” Marty asked.
The word stabbed through them both with the deftness of a knife, echoing
through their minds over and over again –
how? how? how? How could they
communicate with a throbbing glob of... whatever it was?

 
“We’ve never even seen
anything like this before,” Marty added. “How are we going to communicate with
them?”

 
“They’ve never seen us
before, either. We’re just as strange to them as they are to us. They’re
probably just curious.”

 
”But, Scott! We could
die out here!”

 
“I know...”

 
The seriousness of the
situation returned to him with the abruptness of Marty’s words. He was right.
They could die out here. But, there had to be something they could do!

 
The three shapeless
globs remained pulsating in the pools, neither appearing hostile nor frightened
by the astronauts. They merely shimmered in the same rhythmic patterns,
changing colors and shape in the slimy gelatin with the ripple of each wave.

 
“Do you suppose they
can see us?” Marty asked, feeling the hypnotic effect of the pools growing more
intense. “If they can, maybe they would understand gestures, or something.”

 
“I doubt it. They
don’t appear to have any optic organs or feelers. If they can see at all, it’s
probably by some kind of sonar or radar. Watch... Make a movement to the side.”

 
Marty stepped to his
right, watching as the center glob oozed in his direction. It changed shape,
then color, but all the time seemed to sense where Marty moved.

 
“See... I’m sure they
know we’re here. But, how?” Scott asked. “If we can only figure that out, maybe
we can...”

 
“What good will that
do? They’re not going to understand us,” Marty chided. “And, if we make any
strange kind of motions, what do we do if they think we’re going to attack
them? They could try to kill us!”

 
Scott was intrigued by
Marty’s proposition. Would they try to kill them? “Let’s move a little closer,
Marty, and see if you’re right.”

 
“Wait a minute! What
if they retaliate? Scott, we haven’t got any weapons. We’d be helpless.”

 
“I know, but we don’t
have time to worry about it. Let’s go.” Another minute had slipped by, and
necessity began to replace their better judgment.

 
Moving with extreme
caution, so as not to crack the surface around the creatures or fall into some
loose chasm of empty powder, Scott and Marty advanced toward the pools. The
liquid grew thicker and darker as they approached, and the astronauts felt
almost as if they could hear the bubbling sounds of the pools lapping and
smacking along the crater edge, mooring the dark, gelatinous creatures in their
liquid pens. But, as they moved almost to the crater edge, one of the globs
grew larger and more ominous, rising upward in a sort of frozen tidal wave
position, threatening any further advance.

 
“I don’t think they
want us to come any closer, Scott,” Marty noted, controlling himself. His voice
had calmed, partly from fear, partly from amazement, but his heart still raced
with an ever-increasing rhythm.

 
“...Or, maybe they’re
just trying to communicate with us,” Scott replied, seeming almost hypnotized
by the monstrous curl and roll of the creature. He took another step forward.